Mobile app backed by Alibaba’s Jack Ma is mimicking Ant Financial

Mynt, the Philippine mobile payments operator backed by billionaire Jack Ma’s Ant Financial, plans to bestir insurance products proceeding to become a spreading financial services platform in its Chinese ally’s image.

The operator of the GCash app is now trying to become a channel for insurance policies with the help of strategic partners that can help it expand a slate of products from banking and credit-scoring to financing and money market funds, Chief Executive Officer Anthony Thomas said in an interview.

“What Ant brings to the table is a platform,” Thomas said during the Credit Suisse Asian Investment Conference in Hong Kong. “When I go to a global merchant, I’m going as part of a family of wallets connected with Ant Financial and that creates a network effect that makes us much more attractive to merchants.”

Ma’s company is helping Mynt with risk management and technology that lets users scan an ID and faces for verification. The Philippines has only recently rolled out a national identity system. Ant Financial and Mynt also created a blockchain-based settlement service between Hong Kong and the Philippines with the help of Standard Chartered Plc in June. This year, Ant started blockchain remittance between Malaysia and Pakistan.

Mynt has bragged out from online payments. It will be now offering an instant-withdrawal bank savings service known as GSave in collaboration with CIMB Group Holdings Bhd. with annualized interest rates of about 2.5 percent, said Thomas. It rolled out credit-scoring system GScore and a credit finance service GCredit around April last year, he said. For a minimum 50 Philippine pesos, users can also invest in its money-market fund, operated by a third-party asset manager. Users earn interest rates of about 4 percent.